James Axler – Deathlands 35 – Skydark

He didn’t let them have it until the first stickie was ten feet away. Aiming for its center chest, he ripped off a single triburst. The three cartridges fired so quickly, so close together, that they virtually entered and exited the same hole in the target The lead stickie

crumpled, and behind it so did the next, and the next, and the next The stickies toppled until the three rounds ran out of steam. The slugs bounced off the last mutant they hit. They knocked it down, but it got up right away and resumed the attack.

With all the bodies clogging the hallway, all those entrapping, tripping arms and legs, the stickies were forced to move more slowly and they packed themselves more tightly together as they advanced down the corridor toward him. Ryan had what seemed like a long time to stare into the face of the first stickie in the line, who had just barely escaped death and who had to know that it wouldn’t be so lucky the next time. There wasn’t any fear on its face, only eagerness.

Ryan reflected it back to him, like a mirror.

If chilling was what he wanted, Ryan gave it to him, with pleasure. At a range of less than four yards, he put three slugs through its heart The same chain reaction of death followed. One after another the stickies behind absorbed the triburst, continuing to topple until the rounds lost their velocity and lethality.

The pile of dead doubled in height, creating a much greater obstacle for the stickies still dropping from the ceiling. As Ryan waited for them to scramble over the bodies and bunch up again, a woman’s scream rang out behind him. It was followed by savage bursts of fire.

Ryan abandoned his position and ducked around the corner When he entered the room adjoining the balcony, he saw stickies swarming over the patio rail. Others already had the four sec men down on the

glass-littered floor, and a mad, thrashing battle was in progress.

Elijah opened fire again, tribursting his own men in order to chill the incoming stickies. Standing just inside the room, he emptied the entire 50-round reloading unit into the melee. By the time he was done, there was no one alive on the balcony.

Elijah tossed aside the empty autorifle and picked up another from the pile of gear he had confiscated from Ryan.

“They’re coming!” Skeen wailed, pointing first toward the hallway, then in the opposite direction, toward an interior door that led to the baron’s bedroom suite.

They were coming from every which way by now, Ryan thought. Through the windows, up the elevator, too. The comer he and the norm survivors had been backed into, had just gotten much, much smaller. It was down to one room and the balcony.

“They’re gettin’ ready to rush us,” Ryan said. “Get away from the doorways.”

The toadies started to move back from the doors, but not quickly enough. Like a pack of wolves, stickies darted out from the hallway. They snatched hold of two of the norms and dragged them around the corner, out of sight.

Neither Elijah nor Ryan could get off a shot.

With screams of the victims and the victimizers ringing in their ears, the last three toadies ducked behind Ryan and Elijah, the men with the blasters, and stepped out on the corpse-littered patio. Roonie-Two with her

baby in arms slipped between Ryan and Elijah for protection.

Before the first screams had died away, fresh ones erupted from the balcony. Ryan turned and saw that a new pair of stickies had leaped over the railing and driven two of the toadies into a corner of the patio. There was nowhere for them to run, no escape from the frenzied attack.

Skeen blundered back into the room, stumbling over the threshold as Ryan one-handed the G-12, drilling rounds into the bases of the stickies* spines. They shrieked and fell, arms flailing in the air. It was too late for the toadies, though. They lay in puddles of their own gore, their throats already torn out

Stickies charged from the bedroom door of the penthouse, making a suicide rush for the five survivors. Elijah turned them back with a full-auto burst, but only just.